Q&A: Activist Who Lost Union’s Support Runs for LA School Board District 1
Daniella Lake | October 16, 2024
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Longtime community activist and education advocate Kahllid Al-Alim is running to represent South Central LA and Mid-City as Los Angeles Unified School Board member for District 1.
Al-Alim, who had been endorsed by the United Teachers Union, which represents more than 35,000 Los Angeles teachers, lost that union’s support after a series of controversial social media posts came to light.
In one such post in October 2022 he praised an antisemitic publication called “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews: How Jews Gained Control of the Black American Economy.” The book, published by the Nation of Islam, details discredited theories about Jews’ business activities.
Saying the book should be compulsory reading in schools, Al-Alim wrote: “We not Burning or Banning Our Future! We Not Playing.”
Al-Alim subsequently apologized for the post and emphasized his support for the Jewish community. “I have spent my life fighting against antisemitism, anti-Arab hate, Islamophobia, and all forms of oppression,” he said in a statement.
In an interview with LA School Report, Al-Alim said he’s worked as a parent activist for over 20 years and his activity on social media shouldn’t disqualify him from serving on the board.
“I have a breadth of experience in terms of working with community based organizations, parent activism and organizing, and then working alongside the union,” he said.
But Al-Alim did not answer questions from LA School Report about why he endorsed the antisemitic book in the first place. He also did not respond to questions about why he “liked” posts in support of Kanye West and Kyrie Irving when the two were under fire for making antisemitic comments.
Born and raised in South LA, Al-Alim works in LA’s sanitation department and has served as president of his neighborhood council. He also served on LAUSD’s African American Education Task Force and the LAUSD Parent Advisory Committee.
In the interview, Al-Alim shares his perspective on the social media scandal, along with his thoughts on charter school co-locations and police in schools.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What do you say to voters who may have lost faith in you in light of your social media posts?
I am disappointed, because a lot of times we do not really get into the details of what really happened and why things came about.
What I shared or liked will not diminish twenty years of commitment to the communities I represented and the dedication to the parents, students, and union power members I stood shoulder to shoulder with.
I’ve never ever made any type of statements or I’ve never had any behavior or conduct that is contrary to what I have done for the past 20 years. And that’s always been someone who is collaborative, someone who has always been fun-loving, someone who has always been respectful, not only of someone’s identity, ethnicity and their gender identity, but the communities that they come from.
I’m still here, stronger, and more determined, and ready to serve board District 1.
Some of your top priorities are stopping privatization, stopping the school to prison pipeline, and stopping reconstitution. Can you tell me more about the changes you want to see in those areas?
We gotta stop wasting time, stop wasting talent, and definitely stop wasting money in the areas of privatization. We know that there are some good private schools in the charter industry that are doing phenomenal work. The issue is they have abused proposition 39 to the point where it actually put LAUSD in a deficit in a particular area.
We had to push back against that and get people to recognize that proposition 39 was being misused in terms of reconstitutions.
This year, LAUSD banned charter schools from nearly half of its school buildings. Do you support the new limits on charter school co-locations?
Absolutely. I was proud to work with UTLA leadership at the time when they were negotiating for the Bargaining for the Common Good and Beyond Recovery campaigns, where there were a lot of good elements in it that helped to push making sure that charter schools had oversight.
Then we talked about how we could start bringing in more educators, more social workers, more school site nurses. But we needed the space. Our libraries were being taken over. Our science rooms were being taken over. A lot of the cafeterias were being taken over.
So I definitely support the moratorium right now as it stands, and I’m looking forward to working with people to iron out [how] it is that proposition 39 is hampering LAUSD and making sure that we equitably deal with the charter industry.
What are your thoughts on school safety and police in schools?
We do not need school police on our campuses. I am a firm believer that our schools, our community schools, our institutions of ingenuity and creativity and not mini correctional facilities.
Can you tell me about some of the specific opportunities and programs that you want to help create or you want to see expand in LAUSD schools?
I’m a big proponent of before and after school programs. So early education head start programs will be one of my big focuses in making sure that the support and resources are there to make sure parents who need to get to work have the ability to be able to drop their kids off and know that their children are safe and will be taken care of.
I am also a big proponent of collaborative, outside partnerships. One of my main goals is to create a work, youth workforce initiative where I’m talking to the Department of Water and Power to help phase in young workers through their programs.
What makes you different from other candidates running for the school board this year?
For me, I’ve always come from that background of sitting in a room with a group of individuals I may or may not have known and collaborating, coming to a consensus and building on something that will be beneficial for the academic achievement for all students, not just a certain group of students, but all students. That’s my primary foundation.
And another priority of mine is to make sure that [students] understand who they are as individuals. I think cultural relevance is really, really, really important. So I am proud to have been a part of creating and being on the African American Advanced Placement Task Force.
I’m proud to be one of the engineers of the Black Student Achievement, not just a supporter. No, I was actually sitting in rooms with folks trying to put this Black Student Achievement plan together.
This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.